Tag Archives: Family

Yesterday, I bought a huge box of Blades Orchard peach seconds for $18 from at the farmer’s market, with the intention of making brandied peaches last night. But I ended up working all day and ran out of steam that evening while I unpacked jars, the pressure canner and other equipment I’d need for the project. I decided to wait until today.

It wasn’t until this morning that I realized what day it was. My Aunt Teri’s birthday. She was the inspiration for making the brandied peaches in the first place — she was famous for them. They were coveted gifts and a beloved side at family holiday meals. After eating the peaches, we often used the leftover juice in the jars for making bellinis. But the world has been without Teri’s brandied peaches since she died two years ago. I still miss her (and her brandied peaches) terribly.

Ancestry.com sent me an email with new hints for ancestors among the Texas death certificates. Amid this information, I learned the supposed birthplace of my 2G-grandfather, Anson G. Bennett — Warsaw, Mo. I say “supposed,” because Anson obviously wasn’t there to verify the information. I haven’t done a lot of research on my Bennett line — this gives me a new lead to work from.

I had a breakthrough on one of my lines over the weekend. I found a passport application for my paternal great-grandmother Ida Champ Ferris, which listed her birthplace as Brownsville, Penn. (Her name was mis-indexed, which is why I’d never come across it before.) I had always thought that she was from the Philly area because that’s where she went to college, but turns out that she was born closer to Pittsburgh. I don’t know much more about her parents except that they came from England shortly before she was born. Hopefully this new information will lead to more clues about them!